THE FISH THAT ATE THE WHALE: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King | Rich Cohen, You are more likely to know the name of the company he led as CEO for 18 years: Picador (2013), p288.
Like me, you've likely never heard the name Samuel Zemurray (unless you're a Tulane grad). You are more likely to know the name of the company he led as CEO for 18 years: United Fruit Company, now Chiquita.
Cohen paints a thoroughly engaging biography of the Russian (present-day Moldova) immigrant Zemurray and his rise from peddling in the streets of Mobile, AL, to the heights of leading a major international firm.
Zemurray arrived in America at age 14 without parents or siblings and found work in an uncle's store. Seven years later, in 1900, he had grown his savings from $100 to $100,000, hustling bananas on the street. Soon, he expanded and started his sourcing and logistics, improving along the way to maintain banana conditions until the point of purchase.
In 1929, he sold his company, Cuyamel Fruit, to his competitor, United Fruit (UF), for $3.5 million in stock, immediately making him one of America's wealthiest men. He conceded to a non-compete that would not allow him to start another banana firm. Three years later, after watching mismanagement from the Boston-educated managerial class staffing UF, he gathered enough proxies to vote out the CEO and replace himself.
Zemurray had successfully toppled the Honduran government, earning special concessions from the replacement government, a tactic he repeated with the help of the U.S. government against a Soviet beachhead in 1950s Guatemala.
In every sense of the word, Zemurray was an entrepreneur.
Cohen's work unpacks Zemurray's life while providing the reader with the necessary background. Cohen doesn't gloss over abuses of that era nor the particular transgressions Zemurray committed, nor does the author placate the bigotry of presentism and blow them out of proportion. This balance is a service to both the reader and history.
Suppose you want to learn more than you need about bananas (like they're a berry), their production, or Central American history wrapped in the narrative of the Horatio Alger tale. In that case, this book is for you!